


Reptile Brain

by CrossoverQueen (Sharysa)



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Colonization, F/M, Filipino Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 16:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18642250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharysa/pseuds/CrossoverQueen
Summary: Thoth finds himself musing upon a different crocodile-god than the one he knows personally - Haik-who-came-from-the-east, a Filipino sea-god who’s lost all but his name after the Spanish conquest.But crocodiles are survivors, after all.





	1. Part 1.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, hi. I've been getting into a Moana-style quest for my culture, and there's not much left of it, so I've been writing this whole new mythos/urban-fantasy around a barely-recorded Tagalog sea-god called Haik.
> 
> Then I started watching American Gods, and found out some Filipinos were kept in human zoos, and got linked to one of my Filipino friend's fanfics.
> 
> A lot of this is lifted from my original work-in-progress novel, where Haik is an undocumented immigrant and I built a crapton of Polynesian-style mythos around him, but I'm gonna try and balance it out with more Asian folklore as well.

Thoth turns his attention to the Pacific Ocean one day, where Asians and Pacific Islanders meet at a watery crossroads: For such a big ocean, he finds their people strangely neglected in American stories.

“There is a navigator-god of the Tagalogs called Haik,” he muses. “Quite often associated with crocodiles, as their ships were adorned with crocodile-heads. Most are stylized nowadays, two forked boards without much detail, but there are some who paint eyes and teeth.”

Seven thousand islands stretch languid in the Pacific, where children play as their old auntie watches. She’s stocky and white-haired, with skin aged like a carabao.

The Tagalog tribe had many gods before the Spanish came to their islands for gold, and just as many names for those gods.

 _“There are demons in the water!”_ The old auntie warns her niece and nephews on the riverbank. “They’re gonna eat you if you go too deep!”

She means the crocodiles: Most are small for the species, not much more than ten feet, but the big ones - the saltwater crocodiles, who roam both the rivers and seas - those are the ones who eat disobedient children.

(“But she too old to chase after three eight-year-olds,” Anansi reminds Thoth as he writes. “And I ain’t never heard an auntie tell the WHOLE truth to her nieces and nephews. Gotta make them behave _somehow_.”)

A young god chuckles from under the surface, flicking his tail just enough so the children can see his scales: They screech about crocodiles and flail back into the shallows, and she laughs.

“I told you, hah? You think I’m just telling stories!” 

For there are demons in the water - but there is also Haik.

 

* * *

 

No one quite remembers when Haik came to the shores of what we now call Manila Bay, or which tribe he might be mixed with; not many Tagalogs are as dark as he is, or as tall and muscular. And most importantly, he _stays_ dark, even when the monsoons drench the jungles and the rice-fields both.

And nobody ever agreed where he comes _from._

Many are content to say he is a datu or the son of one, for Haik surely has enough tattoos to be noble, and he even has the old navigator’s face-tattoos: Crocodile-teeth gaping on his cheeks, of a different style than the Visayans.

 _He is from the far eastern islands, where his ancestors live,_ the city of Maynila commands.

 _The ancestors live under the sea,_ the easternmost Tagalogs laugh. _There’s nothing in the east - just a shitload of water. Even the Badjao won’t go that far._

This conflict is often seen as mistakes in the storytelling, or embellishments, with some healthy arguing - for Tagalogs seldom agree for too long. But Haik is a sea-god, and the people-of-the-water are all at least a little tricksome: For _Haik’s_ ancestors are not the _Tagalogs’_ ancestors.

The Tagalog ancestors do indeed live under the Pacific, in the cool abyss after their bodies wear out: Shades of brown, with the odd handful who are dark like Haik, and small to medium-height. Their muscles are leaner and wiry, as different from Haik as deer are to a horse.

 _He’s one of the water-demons,_ say the river-dwellers. _He rescued a girl from the crocodiles when her canoe tipped over, and he turned human so he could marry her._

The southerly barangays point out that Haik’s name is Malay, so he must be from there. _Haik is the Amihan’s nephew. He’s the sailing-god because the Four Winds are all his cousins, and his ship is a dragon._

 _But he didn’t speak any of our languages when he came here,_ yet another group argues. _And he’s bigger than everyone, even some of the other gods._

 _Haik’s big and muscled because young women want him to be,_ the old women laugh. _When have they gone for old men?_

In time, the Tagalogs - now under the umbrella term ‘Filipino,’ lumped in with Visayans and Kapampangans and all the other tribes that they mutually hate - will reunite with Haik’s people.

(“Yeah,” Anansi says. “When crusty old white men need ‘laborers’ to do all the shit they don’t want to. And the ‘laborers’ can’t even buy a house on their own damn land. Oh, they can _work_ in the resorts and cruise ships and all that fancy shit, but using it themselves? Fuck that.”)

The Americans will ship his followers east where Haik’s ancestors live, full of empty promises.

There will be sugarcane plantations, attended by similar-yet-different natives, and many of them are as big and as muscled as the Tagalogs’ friendly, mysterious sea-god.

There will be sharks and turtles and volcanoes in these islands, worshiped at the same respectful distance that the Tagalogs worshiped crocodiles and dragons, and there will be outrigger ships with crab-claw sails, like the ones that Spain burned.

But the Tagalogs will only meet Haik’s people after they’ve given Haik himself up: After the conquistadors held them at gunpoint to worship a loving, merciful God, and slaughtered the dissenters as examples.

Haik is a kind god, and does not hold his people's survival against them.

Many are shot or stabbed without ceremony, but the priestesses - for they knew far too much - are cut into pieces and fed to the crocodiles, in full and terrible view.

Haik’s chest stings, a bigger and personal wound among the standard hurts of Catholicism.

The conquistadors knew not what they did: The Tagalogs wailed in grief and terror, for they had lost aunties and daughters and cousins. And to Spain, for Catholicism, that was enough.

But the priestesses’ souls washed up on the shores of the afterlife, _Kaluwalhatian_ \- the place that Christians would call heaven. They did not need to voyage across the sea to the horizon line, where the great waves will pitch-pole their boats into the sky-world, for it is dangerous enough to be eaten by crocodiles.

(“Now some Tagalogs said saltwater crocodiles were sea-dragons - end of story,” Anansi informs Thoth, who is dutifully dictating. “And who the hell’s gonna blame them? They some big-ass motherfuckers. But others say: _No. The big ones, they need **human souls** to become dragons._ For all their little cousins are shy and they mostly eat fish, but salties? They’re the only ones who got the hankering and the meanness for some long pork. And there’s only one way to get a Pinoy soul from out its body - at least if you want to _keep_ it.”)

Filipino souls, up to today, are quite prone to getting distracted. People call their soul back home from a hike in the forest, from the dream-world after a long sleep, or after a scary TV show. But they _always_ come back to their bodies, as long as there’s a body to come back for.

(“And those dumbass white folks turned a shitload of crocodiles into dragons,” Anansi grins.)

But Asian dragons are gods in power, if not title: And what use are gods with no followers?

* * *

 

The Tagalogs have long stopped singing the old songs, about Haik the navigator at least. There are scattered myths of the other gods, but even they’re relegated to “fairy-tales,” “folk stories,” the games that children play before they grow into God-fearing Catholics.

No lean and scrappy sailors will voyage with Haik, in this world or the afterlife.

No priestesses will sing or hold feasts to safeguard the ships that go downriver or out to sea, for there are no ships to protect.

No lovesick women will call his many names and wait for him to come dripping out of the water.

(“The Spanish brainwashed the fuck out of Filipinos,” Anansi takes over. “This boy ain’t been touched by no skin-bleaching product in the world. His hair ain’t been straightened or gelled or nothing. And when the voyager-god walks the Manila streets, among those who used to love him, they whisper: He looks like a _farmer._ An _African._ Or worst of all - _a tribesman.”_ )

In Haik’s grief as he swims the Pacific, his shape reverts: Long and armored scales become hard muscle under soft skin, flailing unfocused in the sea.

His reptile-brain is hungry and irritable, demanding that he eat, and he wonders if he should stay just long enough for some _puto_ or _turon,_ to take the edge off.

But he’s not in the mood for the whispers and tight-lipped mouths today, or for people who take his pesos like they were blackened by his skin.

Haik takes a new breath and resumes his crocodile form. He streaks just below the surface, far away from the barely-brown ghosts with no tattoos.

(“He still calls them _brown,”_ Anansi mourns. “Boy, you been too nice for too long. Pinoys are whiter than white people now. At least, the important ones are. I ain’t seen nobody darker than tan on Filipino TV.”)

 _“You can be pale without being Caucasian,”_ Haik says to him, scanning the sunset sky.

(“Then you should tell them before the REAL white folk do!” Anansi laughs. “They gonna get schooled on that sooner or later.”)

There’s the morning-star glimmering beside her brother. Her name is Tala, a daughter of Bathala Maykapal, and she and Haik often sailed together.

Haik doesn’t know if she’s still alive. The stories are known, but the hearts do not follow. Not that he knows of.

And Haik goes east.

* * *

 

Haik of many names resurfaces in Oakland, California: A dark and dripping pillar in board-shorts and tarnished gold bracelets, digging through his pockets. The mortals move around him with politeness instead of disgust, and now the stares from nearby women are appreciative instead of scornful.

(“Boy, how far can y’all swim?”)

“Shit.” His wallet’s been soaked. “Bruh, why you always talking me to death? I forgot my wallet was here.”

“Uh-oh.” There’s a young brown-skinned woman by his elbow, tiny even for a Filipino, with long black waves that have never been straightened. “Lost your money, man?”

“I didn’t lose it, but I need it to dry out.” He squints at her, pretending that he doesn’t know. _“Oi - Pilipino ka ba?”_

“ _Si_ \- wait, that’s Spanish.” She tries to find their own language, but now that she’s _thinking_ (and panicking), it catches in her throat and she goes red. “Wait - wait, don’t tell me -”

_“O-o.”_

_“O-o.”_ She shakes her head and laughs, but it’s fragile and suddenly timid. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? You didn’t ruin anything.”

Filipinos often laugh at their American cousins for not knowing the island languages, unaware that their parents locked them away for survival - brown skin and slanted eyes are bad enough in America, but accents - and different languages - those are a death-knell.

Haik sits and peels his money apart. “Can I trade you five bucks? I’m going to the store.”

“Oh, there’s a Mexican food truck around the block.” She takes it.

“Cool.” He digs a buried towel full of clothes from the sand and shakes his shirt out, with mortals none the wiser that the sand used to be empty. “Okay, this is gonna be a minute.”

“Your day _sucks,_ doesn’t it?” She laughs. “Money’s too wet, clothes are too dry.”

“I’ve had worse.” He pulls his shirt on.

 

* * *

 

On a bench with spicy shrimp tacos and lime, he speaks his name:

“I’m Haik.”  
  
And she speaks hers:

“Carmen.”

They shake hands, warm from the sun.

(“Crocodile-god’s got some hunting to do,” Anansi grins. “She too young for me, but she cute.”)

 _“I don’t eat people, bruh,”_ Haik snaps, but it’s weary. Around him, the land isn’t quite frozen - but it’s moving more slowly than usual. _“And for the last time, can you leave me alone? Just like, a day or two. I’m getting tired of your damn mouth.”_

(“Now, why would I leave right before my little cousin’s getting laid again? How long has it been, four hundred years? Five hundred? I’d have got married right quick. Found myself a non-Catholic girl before they all got shot. God, Filipinos had _birth control!_ Surprise pregnancy? No problem, sweetness, just drink some no-baby tea -”

 _“Anansi.”_ Thoth’s hand stops firmly over the paper.)

_“Cousin? I’m not THAT mixed.”_

(“You know what I mean,” Anansi chuckles. “All the tricksters and misfits and in-betweens. People be hating crocodiles as much as spiders, but they can only kill one of them.”

 ** _“ANANSI.”_** Thoth glares. “He asked you to stop bothering him.”)

A huge white bird, long legs and long neck, crashes the world back to normal speed. She is an egret on very short notice, for the ibis does not cross the sea, but at least she’s a wading bird.

“Hey. You hungry?” Haik tosses a shrimp over.

 ** _We’re sorry about the spider,_** the egret tells him as she snaps it up. ** _Thoth will shut him up for now, but we don’t know for how long._**

“No worries, little cousin.” Haik eats the rest of his food.

(“Oh, SHE your cousin, then?” It’s Anansi’s turn to glare. “The fucking schnozz with wings? I see how it is.”

“Birds are descended from dinosaurs,” Thoth reminds him, grinning.)

The egret pecks at the ground in case she missed something, and then leaves.

“Was that a heron?” Carmen wonders.

“Close - if it’s white, it’s probably an egret.” He stands up and brushes his hands off. “Thanks for the dry money, Carmen. Just let mine sit on a table for a little.”

He is fine with the food and the talk - crocodiles don’t need too much of either to survive - but he is all too glad to stop when Carmen catches his arm, tattooed with black crocodile scales.

“Do you go to the beach a lot?”

“I got a phone, girl.” He laughs, and so does she. “Just let me text you.”


	2. Part 2.

The next day, Thoth waits for the sound of Anansi’s sewing machine - a steady thrumming, very distant from Cairo, Illinois - before he sets up his book.

 _Coming to America,_ the title from the first page reads.

Out of an assortment of pens, there is a calligraphy brush, not dusty but seldom used. It pulls his fingers over, but it does not want to cross the original title out: Just add some subtitles.

 ** _Pa-g-da-ti-ng sa A-me-ri-ka._** The Tagalog characters that flow from the brush compact the language into quick and tidy syllables. After the base title is written, a quick dotting over the I- and E-sounds, with X's beneath to cancel the ending vowels, completes it.

“Baybayin is such a nice script,” Thoth surveys. “It’s a shame that so few know it anymore.”

 _“You can’t let **slaves** learn how to **read,”**_ Anansi says around a cluster of pins. _“Especially not their own language. The Spanish liked it for a while so they could translate the Bible, but then the natives started passing secret messages. Or they just thought it was happening. Either way, they burned up as many books as they could.”_

“Aren’t you busy?” Thoth frowns as he asks, though he takes pains to blow gently on the ink.

 _“I got helpers.”_ He drops the pins into one hand, where some spiders collect them and file off to pin as needed. _“Just a quarter-inch for the seams, this is silk.”_

Thoth picks up his regular pen and continues the story.

 

* * *

In the old days, it took a bit more organizing for Haik to meet up with young women; for there were few clocks except for those of the wealthy, who could afford hourglasses and water-clocks. The everyday folk - who Haik most loved - settled for using the sun, the moon, or basic sundials and smoky tallow candles.

But in modern-day America, Haik navigates an Oakland grocery store, unnoticed in a shirt, jacket, and jeans, until his phone pings with a text-message.

 _What’s up?_ Carmen asks.

 _No work today,_ he texts back. _What about you?_

That is not a lie, for Haik has never worked full-time in this economy. Even before the crash, his full-time jobs were seldom the regular nine-to-fives; dark skin and tattoos are no less disdained here than in the Philippines. When Filipino employers spot “Tagalog” on his languages list, they look at the bright young man with pity and put him to manual labor, kitchen work, the late-night shifts… A rule of thumb is if the public doesn’t see him, or if nobody wants to do it, it was probably Haik’s job at some point.

Haik is a kind god, and does not hold his survival against them.

 _I’ll be off work at seven,_ Carmen replies. _Should be home by 7:30 or 8._

Complicating matters are his legal documents, denoting his legend in terms that nobody would blink at. Haik Nalumauig, son of Filipino immigrants, who bounces between the Pacific Islands and Luzon as he visits his wind-scattered cousins. The papers themselves are genuine, printed officially and backed up by his cousins, but the problem is who _issued_ them. For the people-of-the-water - called _kapwang-tubig_ in Tagalog, and a host of language-specific names that are often glossed to “merfolk” but translate more literally to “water-demons” or “water-spirits” - are not often government officials.

 _Cool,_ he texts back after checking a carton of eggs. _You want to meet up somewhere?_

Haik is only a god of humans; he can tell the people-of-the-water to keep his secret non-lethally, but they have a… _“nuanced”_ view of such commands. Haik often hears from the news that police and ICE officers - when getting too nosy about his documents - often get shot or stabbed in a gang shooting by the port, or their car skids off the stormy road and lands in the ocean, or - a throwback to the old days - they drown when a beach-trip goes sour.

They’ve often lost chunks once they’re found. Organs, ribs, sometimes a limb or two. But the people-of-the-water aren’t as hungry as the gods, for humans have always loved the water, be it swimming or boating or fishing; and so there will always be “accidents.”

 _“Police are for special occasions,”_ they say. _“Their souls are thick with greed and cockiness. It’s fun to remind them they’re only powerful with **other humans.”**_

Haik is a kind god, but forever gets confused with the question: Should he protect certain people from water-demons, if those people are the ones hunting him?

(“All these Pinoy motherfuckers be eating people,” Anansi says over a patch of embroidery. “Y’all got fifty vampires, giant-ass birds, and dragon-crocs. Why are there so many beach resorts if Filipinos don’t ask you to protect them from Princess Ariel no more?”)

 _“I don’t **stop** protecting Filipinos because they’re Catholic. I just don’t protect… **white people,”**_ Haik admits, doubling back for some milk. _“I mean, I’m a tribal god. Not hardcore ‘get one of my people to talk for you’ tribal, but if a white girl’s stuck on a dead boat? The coast guard and the navy are coming in five minutes, she don’t need me.”_

(Anansi cackles. “Shoot, boy. Y’all got some crocodile teeth, after all.”)

 _“And let’s be real, white folks are dumb as hell on vacation. Reading signs? Safety regulations? Logic? ‘Nah bruh, I’m in paradise!’ But if someone goes boating **alone,** no lifejacket, shitfaced to hell, and they hit a reef and get half-eaten by all the stuff in the water - it’s sad, but what did they expect?”_ Back in the produce section, Haik pokes at some spinach and doesn’t feel any sand weighing it down; into the cart it goes. _“We only call it the PACIFIC Ocean because that fucker Magellan got lucky. It’s the same as the Atlantic, just warmer.”_

Haik is a kind god, but he’s not stupid.

 _It might be too late for the beach again, lol._ Carmen texts back. _Unless you like night walks?_

 _No problem,_ Haik answers. _Beach at 8?_

 _Yay._ _:)_

The meeting is planned, the week’s groceries acquired; and Haik goes to the cashier.

 

* * *

Haik has a fondness for nighttime, in spite of his name meaning “day.” In the quiet, cooling dark, he has often walked along the rivers or seas to see if someone turns up.

And in these times, it’s harder for people to discriminate if almost EVERYONE looks “dark.”

A few minutes after parking, he combs the beach for a short while to find Carmen sitting on a bench. Her hair is braided now, which he regrets but understands; long hair is difficult to maintain, after all, and waves or curls even more so.

“Hi!” She waves.

“Hi.” And he sits. “How are you?”

“Good. You?”

“Fine.”

A comfortable silence, soft and snug around their shoulders. Haik would like to lean closer, but he will wait for her to decide.

“Where did you get your tattoos?” Carmen wonders, one hand inching towards his crocodile-scaled arm. “Are you part-Polynesian?”

“Here comes the history lesson.” Haik chuckles. “I got my tattoo from a Samoan friend, but the design is Filipino. We had a really big tattooing tradition before colonization; Tagalogs didn’t have tattoos when Spain came, but that was because Muslims came about a hundred years before that. Anyone who still had them would have been old once the conquistadors came.”

 _“Oh my god, really?!_ I thought tattoos were just for Visayans!” She makes contact with his ink again, but consciously this time, and he cannot help a jolt of heat - her hands are cracked from many washes, with telltale smudges of spice on her wrists that let him know she’s a cook; and her grip is like a fish-hawk’s.

But as quick as they came, she draws them back sheepishly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t mind.” His teeth flash back through the dark.

For Haik is a kind god, and he loves when people smile back.  


* * *

_“And now,”_ Anansi shakes out his bright-patterned silk: A green-and-black stretch from his ankles to shoulders, with embroidered blue flowers and gold animals. “Y’all might think that Haik is using some god-juice to get the cutie-pie all over him, but you look at Aquaman there and tell me he needs _help.”_

Thoth pauses again in his writing, fighting another sigh, and he wonders if it was a good idea for him to take on the bulk of the Spider’s comments. “So different from Sobek,” he muses.  


* * *

An ibis wades in the shallows of the Nile as small creatures scatter for the riverbank.

There is His Lordship, Pointed-of-Teeth, winding battered and green through the reeds until he turns into a dark-skinned young man. He is tall and handsome, quite a bit leaner than Haik and his saltwater crocs, but a frown’s gouged heavy into his face, and he’s walking crooked from old wounds. His eyes will startle those close enough to notice - hooded and speckled green like his crocodiles, they’re far too big and youthfully clear for how sour the rest of him is.

And then he smiles, wide open with perfect white teeth.

(“So _that’s_ how you get women,” Anansi approves. “I knew you couldn’t steal ALL of them from their husbands.”)

“Where you going, bruh?” Sobek asks Thoth.

“To Cairo with Anubis,” he answers.

“That’s damn obvious,” Sobek points out. “Even if it’s the one in America.”

“You think people gonna be looking for us?” he says. Then: “You going to Florida? You got cousins there.”

“Too many white people, though.” And Sobek turns sour again. “I’ll go to California.”

“There’s still a lot of white folks there,” Thoth laughs gently. “They taking over the whole damn world, man.”

“They _trying to._ ”

They fist-bump. Sobek turns back into a crocodile, sloshes back into the water, and vanishes under the surface.

They will meet again in time, but it may take a while.  


* * *

“See, this here don’t look like much,” says Anansi over his rectangle of silk. “And for commoners, yeah, it’s just a wrap skirt. Fold it in half a couple times, tie a knot, you’re done. But for the village chiefs and the Filipino city-kings, they got a lot of fancy ways to show off.”

He hands it over generously - but no one’s there.

“Shit, where is he?”

 _ **I don't think he heard you.**_ A spider in the corner tugs at their web for him to look. They follow the thread of silk, ebbing from silver to blue and then green like the tides -

\- and get interrupted by a broken portion of web, under the dutiful egret’s feet.

 ** _Gotta be faster than that,_** she informs them.

 _“Motherfucker!”_ Anansi tucks the spider into his collar. “It took me a week to make this! I’mma roast your skinny ass for dinner, girl!”

She dodges his swing, laughing.  


* * *

Anansi’s already missed quite a lot, after getting distracted with the tangent on Sobek: In a run-down apartment, the morning light timid and dusty, Haik wakes up in a bed where he can't quite stretch.

Carmen isn’t there - he hears water running in the bathroom - but her smell lingers in the air and the soft green cotton.

“Hey.” She returns.

“Hey.” He wraps his crocodile-arm around her waist, wincing as his joints crack. “God, you got a lot of energy for being half my size. I ain’t been this worn out in a _long_ time.”

She laughs - her face goes pink under the soft brush of his fingers - and lies back down. “It’s been a while for me, too.”

“Mm-hmm.” Haik would know about that.

Soon after landfall, the Spaniards were horrified to find that their new island colony, full of goldsmiths and weavers and farmers, were far more relaxed about sex than they’d thought. Weddings for commoners were an announcement and a big meal to round up all the cousins and in-laws, and not all of them had enough money for a priestess to speak their oaths.

Certain tribes would only give tattoos to young men after they killed a foe or took a lover, and young women were all too happy to help with that second part, since they were often drinking special tea to get rid of unwanted pregnancies.

Some regions stated that barring young children who lacked such impulses, and the scattered priestesses and sorcerers who reserved themselves for their immortal spouses, one could not reach the afterlife as a virgin.

Yet more of them took a more practical view that sex was like everything else in life - you needed at least _a little_ bit of practice to get good at it, and not many people wanted virgin wives or husbands.

And young women of the Tagalogs and Bisayans - for all they hated each other - had a strikingly similar way of solving that problem.

“Before Spain started hardcore converting us,” Haik takes over, “the young women in a barangay would visit the hottest dude they knew for some training-sex.”

“Oh my god, we had boy-whores!” Carmen’s laughter is joyful, but short-lived when the memories come.

Her parents are more relaxed about Catholicism, since her grandmother’s religion has been softened with medical science, ironically hewing closer to their ancestors’ views of sex: That people often want it, and there’s nothing inherently wrong as long as everyone consents, isn’t in a separate relationship (or god forbid, _related_ ), and knows what they’re doing.

Carmen has had a network of friends and acquaintances and friends-of-friends who come to her about it. Because they didn’t know how to say no. Because they want to say yes, but don’t quite know what comes after that. Because they’ve been hurting a lot worse than ‘first time at sex’ should entail (girls are sometimes bleeding when they run to her house in the middle of the night, hoping that it scabs over before they have to tell their parents why they were ‘sick’). Because they think daydreaming or wanting to have sex means they’ve been tainted before anything’s physically happened - after all, good Catholics only have sex when they’re married, right?

Most distressing is that it continues through the years, and her clientele expanded instead of shrunk. Grown men and women, from work or class or the neighboring houses, in their twenties to thirties and frequently married, barely even know _what sex is._

They know the mechanics of Tab A goes into Slot B, that sperm gets ejaculated and starts its race for the egg - but not that it feels better when you like it, or that most women need at least a few minutes of warmup. And sometimes Carmen has to start from Square 1 and explain the same thing, over and over - _women want to have sex._

This is a mind-blowing thing to realize, both for women and horrified men.

The good times are when men realize they’ve been as clueless about sex as the women have.

The bad times - when men can’t handle being wrong about something, and refuse to learn how to fix it - lead to breakups or divorces. Or separations, for the devout Catholics.

Haik can hear the crush of sadness and desperate teaching, the miserable souls wailing through her unbound hair.

He wonders if she was supposed to be a priestess, for there are at least two kinds of healing she’s working with. But he will wait for her to say it out loud.

“So, women just… walked up to a hot guy and had sex with him?”

“Not right _there,_ but yeah,” he laughs. “No courtship or prostitution.”

“What if they got pregnant?”

He knows she is aware of the literal answer - she’s a doctor’s granddaughter, after all - but many Tagalogs, men and women alike, hunger to hear the words from his mouth. Their reptile-brain begs them to _let him say it,_ to hear it fall plain and matter-of-fact - for it is not just that he is their people’s sea-god, but that he heard this from their ancestors.

“If they didn’t want a kid, they got rid of it. If they wanted it, they kept it.”

“What about getting married?” She wonders. “It’s shitty being a single mother.”

“It’s shitty _now,_ ” he corrects her. “Back then, you had friends or family to help. Nobody fucking threw their daughters out for premarital sex; that wasn’t a thing. I mean, if a farmer had sex with a rich person, that might be a problem, but sex in your social class was usually fine.”

“What about… like, inheritance or something?”

“You can get an inheritance from your mom,” he reminds her gently. “She could own land, learn a trade, inherit something from _her_ parents. Plus, having kids from a fling or a first marriage was good news if her next husband wanted them.”

She laughs. “So having kids out of wedlock was fine. What about not having them?”

“They drank a tea. Before sex, or when they found out they were pregnant; there were probably different types.” Haik does not remember what the heathen brews would be, for it has been a long time since the Tagalogs considered it an option; and the Spanish certainly wouldn’t name the ingredients, quick as they were to call the pagans _bruja_ , _demonio,_ or all the other names.

“All right, I think that’s enough for today.” Carmen’s soul is starting to shrink into a ball, eyes wide and wondering.

“Aw, why?”

She leans into his shoulder, but cannot relax. “Just feels weird, to ask for a history lesson.” Her breath hitches. “I guess because… I had to teach a lot of Pinoys about sex, since I hit high school. Doctor’s granddaughter, after all. And now the most _indio_ guy ever comes up and tells me… we weren’t always like this.”

There, she’s told him the basics. He will wait for more, if she feels like it.

“They were trying to learn the good stuff, _ay?_ ” He kisses her neck. “That explains a lot.”

“What, is there a height requirement for sex?” She laughs, and so does her soul.

“No, but things could get risky.”

“Arrr, do you fear death?” She imitates Davy Jones.

Haik tends to attract all sorts of minority women, beset on all sides by unhappiness and death, and stereotypes and death, and responsibilities and death, and trafficking and death and more death and _more death and **more death -**_

**_DO YOU FEAR DEATH?_ **

Back when the world was young, Haik still had his face-tattoos: Beautiful black crocodile-teeth that burn along his cheekbones. As the Muslims and the Spanish and the Americans come along, he is showing them less and less. Tagalogs with second-sight can see through his disguise, and often Polynesians as well, but he cannot risk it too often.

**_I AM HAIK WHO CAME FROM THE EAST, THE SEA-GOD OF THE TAGALOG TRIBE. I FEAR NOT THE GREAT WAVES NOR THE COLD MOUNTAINS NOR THE DARK HUNGRY FORESTS, AND NEITHER WILL YOU._ **

Haik has a kinship with Disney’s Davy Jones; he was not a proper psychopomp, but the way to the afterlife is hard without your ancestors, so Haik and his crew of sailors and priestesses often sailed the rivers and recovered the souls who lost their way - starving and fearful, often shell-shocked from a violent death, and like to become demons.

Children are most prone to getting lost after death, poor things. They cry for their living parents, many of which cannot hear them. They cry for rice, for mangoes, for they can smell the funeral food, but cannot make sense of how to get to it, and so they stuff their mouths with dirt or leaves in desperation. In the dark forests, or trapped in the rivers and lakes, they cry and shrivel into pale sticks with coconut-heads.

If the crew is not too late, the child runs up to the nearest person and clutches their legs or waist, reaching small fingers for the food after their hunger for contact is done.

But worse is when the child _stops crying._

For they no longer want food or a kind embrace: They look at the crew of immortals with bloodshot eyes, and their smiling teeth have grown like a crocodile’s. Much faster than malnourished children should be, they can dodge the priestesses’ stingray-tail whips and sink their teeth into someone’s wayward arm.

Some of them run to the forest, hiding their eyes and teeth as they return to the mortal plane, so that humans only see the child they once were - and that is when a child’s lost soul becomes a _tiyanak,_ a demon-child that hungers for flesh.

It is a thankless job to kill demons - but they are the gods of the Tagalogs, and so must protect their people.

**_DO YOU FEAR DEATH?_ **

In the present day, Carmen shakes him. “You okay?”

He blinks. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Just got into a weird thought,” he admits. “All the pregnancy talk. We used to say that dead kids become demons. Anyone can become a demon if they lose their way in the Otherworld, but dead kids become the _tiyanak._ ”

“And the souls of aborted fetuses,” Carmen adds wryly.

“Back then, it was just kids in general,” Haik says. “The otherworld is a scary place, and it’s hard for the ancestors to find kids. If they die and their soul gets lost, you need special rites to get them to the afterlife.”

“My grandma says souls get lost all the time,” Carmen laughs. “If I go hiking in the wild places, call my soul back or it’ll stay there. Wake up in the morning, call it back from the dreamworld.”

“We got some flaky-ass souls in the Philippines,” Haik laughs. “But it’s only a problem if you’re dead, or if a _mangkukulam_ grabs it.”

They have not checked the time yet, but it’s getting brighter and they’re getting hungry, so they get up and go through their morning routine as slowly as possible.

In the kitchen, there’s Anansi dangling in spider-form, having rushed through his Otherworld web-repairs before squeezing through a crack in the window.

 ** _“That dumb bitch of Thoth’s,”_** he grouses. **_“Bruh, I made you this whole-ass wrap skirt with silk and you ain’t even seen it yet. What do you call it, a_ tapis? _”_**

“Oh, motherfucker!” Haik feigns surprise and grabs a dishcloth, but Carmen gets it back.

“Don’t kill him, he keeps the flies away!”

“He big as fuck, though!”

 _“Oh my god.”_ She laughs. “Your giant ass is scared of bugs.”

“They got too many legs.” Haik fills the kettle from the faucet, sets it on the farthest burner he can, and takes one of the chairs. “You go and get bit, then, Spider-Woman.”

Anansi laughs at him.


	3. Part 3.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Here is a BIG content warning aside from my umbrella warning of "colonization of the Philippines, nothing is good about it:" 
> 
> 1) There's a magical sex-change that's very bloody, and NOT recommended by the gods.
> 
> 2) That event I mentioned before, about Spain feeding Filipino priestesses to crocodiles? It was committed against both cis-women and what modern folks would call transwomen and LGBT people. Murdering regular people apparently got old-fashioned. Thank you, Spain, for recording all the shit you did to the Philippines. :(

The hours that stretch out to noon are full of television shows, scattered stories, and a flood of skin-to-skin contact. Haik has missed that last part especially, and not just from women.

American men are touch-starved like nothing else--the human need for hugs and touch gets strangled away as they grow up, through jeers of being gay, or being childish, or being like a girl. Eventually they fall into line and only make contact through violence or sports, “friendly” smacks to the head or the shoulder or the back, with the occasional handshake or acceptable-in-dire-situations hug.

It is a rare man who survives such a beating.

Filipino men add a distaste for his skin color. Their touch is tinged with ever-present pity or condescension, or constant little jokes of ‘ _mga itim’_ or ‘ _moreno,’_ and Haik is no less fond of that than of Americans’ conditioning to be “manly.”

“If they’re in a _really_ good mood, they call me _puti,”_ Haik finishes.

“Oh my god, that’s so mean!” Carmen is nestled by his shoulder, so he can’t quite see her face, but her soul is either startled or frightened.

“Yeah, well. Pinoys are great at joking around, ay?”

They don’t have to be _nice_ jokes.

But the instincts for touch are still there--just nagging and ignored, frozen at whatever age they were pushed off from a hug or told to stop crying, and only released with alcohol or women. (Even women aren’t always unscathed. Some men are trained so well that they only touch their wives for sex, so the wives in turn are forced to fill non-sexual longings with other people.)

When Haik makes contact with other men--heterosexual, tall and muscled, an impeccable example of what Christians call masculine, if one avoids his dark skin and the tattoos on it--they often don’t know how to react. But their trained avoidance gives way quite quickly, for they can sense his lack of Christian fear, even if they can’t comprehend why.

Unless, to his amusement, they’re Muslim.

* * *

 

_“Oh my god, yay! Did you grow up in Mindanao?!”_

_Haik laughs as he finds himself enveloped by wiry, olive-skinned arms. “No, but I visited a couple times. Why?”_

_“Catholic dudes hate touching people, bro! They’re so uptight!”_

* * *

 

“Guys don’t hate touching people,” Carmen argues.

“They hate touching _other dudes,_ ” Haik corrects her with amusement. “You’re a girl, so you’re fine.” He plays with her hair. “God, if you’re older than… ten or something, dudes keep telling me ‘hey Kuya, stop hugging people all the time. That’s _bakla._ ’”

Across the morning, there are snacks; Carmen gets the occasional phone call or text, and at noon while she’s getting dressed, she gets a call that frees her from work for today. Five minutes later, she’s back into red shorts and a tank-top.

Haik flips through the TV Guide and stops at The Filipino Channel. Among the pale ghosts of a talk show, a meticulously coiffed and manicured young man chatters on. The audience laughs rather too loudly when he pauses; their American cousins aren’t sure whether they’re laughing at the jokes, or at him.

“Why do Pinoys think gay men are all campy and cute?” She wonders. “I mean, _some_ gay guys must look like you.”

“It comes from the old times,” Haik begins. “In a lot of tribes, women were the only ones who could be priestesses. Men could be healers and sorcerers, but the only men who could hold _religious_ ceremonies were the datus or the kings. Sometimes the gods would call a man to be a priestess, so he had to become a woman.”

“Is this what the Spanish talked about in all the records?” Carmen winces. “With… you know, all the _crossdressers?”_

“Yeah, the dudes wearing dresses and fucking other guys.” Haik tries not to get too angry, so he exhales slowly. “They were the _bayok--_ the men who married other men, or the men-who-became-women. The women who married women, and the women-who-became-men, they were priestesses, too.”

“We call lesbians ‘tomboys’ now,” Carmen whispers. “What did we call them back then?”

 _“Fuck, I don’t remember.”_ Haik tightens his grip on purpose this time. “But my cousins, they say--LGBT folks were the goddess Lakapati’s people. She was a harvest-goddess and a hermaphrodite--literally, she had both parts down there--so we thought, these people who weren’t ordinary men and women? They must be like her.”

All Haik remembers now are the gunshots, searing through so many priestesses’ holy flesh; and their loved ones, held captive, bear witness.

“They shot a whole group of priestesses and they fed the bodies to crocodiles.” Haik gets it over with. “A lot of them were cis-women, but some would have been LGBT men and trans-women.”

“They slaughtered whole pagan villages, too,” Carmen says, curling up with resignation into his chest. “To make their neighbors convert faster.”

“Yeah. But it’s easier to kill the priestesses. In the long run.” He wishes she was surprised, but he’s also relieved; this news is often a shock to homeland Filipinos, sheltered from Catholicism’s bloody past, or indoctrinated from years of propaganda. “You can’t stay pagan if you don’t have any leaders.”

* * *

 

Haik does not know where Lakapati went, after so many of her people died. He heard her first desperate cry mingled with that of the mortals’, two primal noises of grief. He still hears it sometimes in his sleep, because he could not follow her after she ran blind into the woods.

For he had to go the other way: Into the bloody river, desperate to keep waiting jaws away from the priestesses’ fresh, warm bodies.

It’s one thing for crocodiles to send the souls that they eat to the sky-world.

It’s another thing when people have to _watch._

Haik is a kind god, and powerful besides, but with his crew lost and wandering? He is only one.

After the first wave of bodies were dumped into the water, Haik was caught in tug-of-wars, shaken off, dragged along or death-rolled, and simply batted away by the largest crocs. He begged, he snarled, he pleaded for his brethren to leave just a few of them for burial.

But they could not help their hunger, for there were dozens of corpses with just-fading pulses--and the priestesses’ souls, freshly untethered, smelled so much stronger and burned so much brighter than ordinary people. The crocodiles roared and churned and fought to eat the best ones, unheeding of Haik’s pleas.

 ** _“SOULS!”_** cried the eldest beasts, tearing away pieces of flesh. **_“HUMAN SOULS! WITCHES’ SOULS! THEY CHANGE US INTO DRAGONS!”_**

When Haik resurfaced, shaking and covered in blood, it was to the next wave of bodies.

The conquistadors would not have seen him crawl ashore, even if they cared of his existence, so focused were they on breaking Haik’s people.

One of the boys did, though, wide-eyed and shivering: He was eight or ten years old, a bit before children begin to develop the fear of spirits. “Mama,” he whispers. “It’s Haik. He’s all bloody.”

 _“Did they shoot you, too?”_ She shuddered when she spotted him--caught between her grief and the shock of seeing her people’s sea-god covered in her people’s blood, her hands tried to move and comfort him. But they shook, and they stopped halfway.

And Haik the crocodile-god, already numb with grief, he shook his head and cried.

* * *

 

In the present day, as the sun sets red, Haik gets his face wiped off by a worried Carmen. Her hands have been softened with lotion today--a scent whispers of garden paths and nighttime flowers, little tendrils of greenery.

“You okay?” Carmen asks.

“No.” His face is wet again. “Just, why would they do that? I mean, I know _why_ \--they wanted to make us Catholic. But feeding priestesses to crocodiles? Who came up with that shit?”

* * *

 

In the old days, the Tagalog priestesses were not always women--at least not in body.

Now and then in a village, there would be a girl who had no intention of sex with men, or a boy who did not court girls--perhaps there was someone who courted anyone as they pleased. Most rare of all, there was a child who insisted they were the opposite gender, or whose genitals could not be discerned the usual way--sometimes they even changed as the child grew up.

 _You are Lakapati’s people,_ the adults told them all, _for she is a woman with both parts, too._

They took such children to the village priestess, a kind witch or healer or sorcerer, for training or blessings as they could afford. They gave them much love and awe, searched far and wide for a future spouse. The LGBT spectrum would be called “third gender” or “the god-touched,” and frequently ‘hermaphrodite’ or ‘transvestite,’ for those were the closest words back then.

Many will shrug off their bodies as mosquito bites, or mild illnesses. Without Spain’s hatred of women and the West adding transphobia, there is no reason to think being a third gender--or a woman--is inferior or strange. Men who are content in their bodies see dresses and long hair as the needs of their job.

After all, ordinary men could not hold ritual, unless they were chiefs or kings.

Others wear their gender’s clothes, do the appropriate range of jobs, grow or cut their hair as needed, and take spouses whenever they can.

It was not a perfect solution, though. With such small numbers and years if not decades between them, some of the god-touched could not marry, however far they searched. And sometimes they detested the thought of lives spent stuck in the wrong bodies--for their teachers, after years of training, were naturally loath to transfigure someone so important.

Some could shapeshift into forms more to their liking, but the trouble was knowing they would get tired, and must resume their own bodies at some point.

They could ask the gods for help, but the songs for permanent magic were long and delicate, needing anywhere from weeks to a year, and many offerings besides, though the results were certainly worth it.

And some of the god-touched could not wait, or had no money: They became desperate enough to ask the diwat in the wilds, or the people-of-the-water, who had a faster way of spellcraft--though harsher.

* * *

 

“HAIK!” The old woman cries, sloshing through blood in the river. “Where is my apprentice?!”

She is not afraid of Haik, who grimaces at the blood--he would never do such a thing. But she is not a water-witch, and does not know who _did._

It’s a merman who joins them, bright-clothed with muscled arms, but his skin is unnervingly white--like the rarest Visayan princesses Haik sees on his travels, coddled and carried on litters until they can barely walk, or the cave-dwelling creatures without eyes. Stranger still is his hair-color, not a normal brown or black, but red like the kelp or burned skin.

“You can’t punish me for making a deal,” he tells them, rather too quickly. “He gave me an offering so I could change his shape. ‘I don’t want to be a girl all my life,’ he said. ‘I hate my chest. I want to look like you.’ And I got rid of it, didn’t I?”

“That’s not what he meant!” The priestess wants to slap him for being so brutal, but she is too old for it now: The sand under her feet shifts as she raises a hand, nearly pitching her over, so she staggers back to the shallows.

Her apprentice dredges himself out of the rapids, shaky-limbed and bloody.

“Auntie,” he sputters. “Auntie, I had to do it.”

Haik has to catch him as he drifts, too weak to swim--but a frantic, wincing glance under his shirt shows an unharmed chest: Too long and bony, since he’s so young, but very much male. The blood is already washing off.

“You didn’t think I’d just cut his tits off and leave him, did you?” The merman’s laughing at them, circling languidly, as if the river’s just a fishpond.

Haik takes out his stingray-tail whip and cracks it over the surface, but with the apprentice’s weight on his arm, the mermaid can dodge it easily.

“Look, we might eat humans, crocodile-god. Some of the merfolk sacrifice them--but not the ones who ask for help,” the merman tells him. “And we don’t _let_ things go wrong if we can.”

Haik cracks the whip again--it lands this time, the water steaming as the merman shrieks.

“You can’t kill me for doing business!” He clutches his shoulder, where the lash smokes, and bares his long teeth at Haik. “He asked me to do something! I did it! He’ll be fine soon!”

“I can give you a warning, though!” Haik shows his own teeth, with the crocodile-snout stretching his jawline. “You play tricks with all that blood again, I’m not gonna talk next time! There’s better ways to change shape than cutting people up!”

“We cannot make something out of nothing, crocodile-god,” the merman explains, with his tone close to an apology. “And neither can we wish things away. But we can take a piece off, and use it to make something new; we can make more or less of it, or turn it to something else as we choose. We cannot gain anything without giving something in return.”

“Well…” Haik shares a glance with the priestess: Merfolk are kin to the diwat, in spirit if not element--they choose words carefully, leave some of them out, and interpret requests as loosely as possible. But they rarely, if ever, lie. “At least clean up the mess when you’re done. People drink from this river.”

The merman chuckles, his good mood as eerily quick as if Haik had never flogged him, and plunges into the rapids.

The blood darkens like scabs as he streaks off, and splits towards both shores in his wake, before it seeps into the banks like water into a dishcloth. The priestess scoops up a bit of silt--grayish brown as usual--and tastes it with concern: Then she shakes her head, for it is unsullied dirt.

Haik often wonders where all that blood went, or what the merman changed it into. (And in the present day, he will wonder what they used to make his American documents.)

“Will you have to find a new apprentice, Auntie?” the boy wonders, groggy. “I can wear a skirt if I need to, and I can marry a man. It’s being a girl that I didn’t want.”

“You’re a different kind of god-touched,” the priestess assures him. “You were born a girl and became a boy, after all.”

“Am I too old to get big, Haik?” He asks the sea-god then. “I’m almost seventeen, but I stopped growing when I was a girl. I want to look like you.”

“That’ll take about ten more years, Totoy.” Haik laughs, but more for the apprentice’s reassurance than because he’s amused. “Don’t worry too much. I’ll find someone for you.”

* * *

 

 ** _“Holllllld up, little cousin,”_** Anansi calls from the corner of Carmen’s house, slowing the world around them again. ** _“So, Tagalogs didn’t have dude-priests, so far so good. The transman is a priestess because he was born a girl.”_**

“Yeah.” Haik doesn’t mind the interruption too much. He tucks Carmen under his chin, who nestles slowly but steadily into the crook of one elbow.

**_“But he made a deal with Ursula the sea-witch’s brother, to give him the right parts.”_ **

“Some people asked the gods because we didn’t go cutting them up,” Haik reminds him. “But that took time, and money. When you’re desperate, you just want results.”

 ** _“Yeah, that happens,”_** Anansi agrees. ** _“Anyway, now that he got a dick, why was he still up for being a priestess? Was he gay?”_**

“That’s what she meant by ‘a different type of god-touched,’” Haik says. “But even if he was straight--the merfolk didn’t take away anyone’s memories. He was still a girl who turned into a boy, he just used magic to do it. Straight cismen could be healers and witches and all, just not _religious figures_ unless they were noble. If a gay man gets called by the gods, all he needed was to wear a dress and marry a man. Like… you can’t STAY a man if you’re called by the gods. Ordinary men can’t hold ritual. That’s how things go for Tagalogs.”

 ** _“Sounds legit.”_** The Spider gets shaken by an errant breeze through the window, and he tosses another anchor line. ** _“So how come you’re still using ‘he’ and ‘him’ and all that?”_**

“Oh.” And Haik huffs. “Tagalog doesn’t have that all English business. He. She. They. It. Y’all don’t even use the last two enough, man. Tagalogs just use _‘siya.’_ Like, ‘hey, she’s Carmen’-- _‘siya ay Carmen.’_ ‘Hey, he’s Haik’-- _‘siya ay Haik.’_ You can’t mix up pronouns in Tagalog if everyone uses the same one.”

The Spider laughs at his irritation.

* * *

 

The apprentice gets _bigger,_ sure enough. His muscles pack on as he chops wood, and carts water or rice or tired children. At nineteen, his teacher’s heart begins to falter, so he shares their title of priestess and takes over her daily duties, while she saves energy for the larger rituals. He moves to transporting injured adults, fresh-killed game or livestock--the pre-modern struggles of life.

But he does not get much _taller,_ with a half-hearted growth spurt that left him in the middle of the genders: Taller than most women, but not quite eye-level with men.

The village’s uncles and grandfathers laugh their asses off, and call him the baby ox.

Some things slip Haik’s mind, after all.

But Haik is a kind god, and he tries to keep his promises: Eventually he finds a god-touched young man, and nudges him along to the priestess’ village.

Haik does not recall his name, but he was a gardener on the way home from his cousins’ village, dark-skinned as farmers are, and as skittish among people as the nicer diwat. He dug his hands in the earth after they set up camp, as if the first day’s river-trip was a week at sea.

Over land he was happier: He climbed trees and nestled cuttings into damp pouches. He went into the woods with a very quick _tabi-po_ for permission to Uwinan Sana, barely breaking stride--perhaps one of his parents was a diwat--and he returned with wild herbs and spices for dinner.

With such lengths of time among the plants he loved, the gardener did not often speak to Haik, so perhaps that is why the god’s memory of him is foggy.

“Can I find someone like you, Haik?” He asks at dinner, perched on a lower mangrove branch--another diwat-like trait.

Mangroves are not taboo to touch like the diwat’s baliti trees, but they are cherished among the Tagalogs as the trees that line Manila Bay, with their roots home to fish and other sea-creatures. This far inland, without saltwater or brackish, they are quite rare.

“You don’t need my help,” Haik tells him with a chuckle. “My people are anyone with crocodile tattoos and a boat.”

“I don’t mean a sailor, Haik--I don’t like the water--but you’re as nice as people say. You don’t make me stay and talk like other people do, and you don’t tell me to stop cutting plants because they’ll rot or they’ll be too heavy.”

“Really? That’s good.” Haik was startled back then, to think simply letting the gardener go about his business was seen as his usual kindness--but eventually he learned that many Filipinos, as loving as they are, do not enjoy people who dislike large groups or loud parties.

And Haik tells him after swallowing some rice: “There’s a priestess in a village nearby; he’s twenty-two or so. He was born a girl and turned into a man.”

“Of course he is,” the gardener laughs. “Ordinary men can’t hold ritual, Haik.”

“He asked the merfolk to change him.”

“Really?” A quick fear skitters along his face--not of the priestess, but perhaps _for_ him. “Well… did it work? I’ve never heard of the merfolk doing spells like that.”

“They’ll help you if they can,” Haik assures. “They just like to scare you sometimes.”

“My mama’s people don’t do that.” He starts to pick at his own food. “She curses someone who doesn’t speak politely, or ask permission to go into the woods. She blights someone’s crops or their livestock, if their kids are too loud outdoors. But she won’t _play with them.”_

“ _Ay._ Is she a diwat?” Haik finally asks, and the gardener laughs.

The spirits seem sympathetic to the god-touched who suffer, in their strange way: If mortals chafe against heavy muscles or awkward breasts, the wrong genitals that make the wrong fluids, against being too big or too small--then they go to the baliti trees, to the deep wilds, to the sea and the lakes and rivers, where someone of their gender inevitably comes out of the greenery or the dark water.

Perhaps they are mirroring how the god-touched see themselves.

 _I want to look like you,_ the priestess told Haik and the merman both.

And Haik remembers that for a long time, after names and places have been chipped away from his memory, despite his best efforts.

They arrive while the sun is going down. As Haik walks the gardener through the fields, up the path to the house that the priestesses share, an old uncle laughs when they knock politely, and he barges indoors:

“ _Hoy!_ Baby Ox! We got someone for you!”

“What happened?!” The younger priestess darts out, balancing jars and packets of medicine as he puts his shirt on. “Are they hurt?!”

The uncle laughs at such a reflex, ignoring the priestess’ questions on who was brought here and what for, until a pitying Haik (though he struggles not to laugh as well) steps between them.

“Found you someone, Totoy.” He lets himself smile.

* * *

 

In Oakland, five hundred years later, Haik curls up against the red light. The memory-smells of gunpowder and blood in the water sting his eyes, and he gives one of Carmen’s hands a few pecks along her wrist bone.

“My parents knew a boy,” he rasps out. “He was… he was born a girl, and he hated it.”

* * *

 

Soon after the priestesses’ execution, Haik wanders through the fields again, their blood dried and cracking on his skin.

A little girl spots him and hides behind her mother’s leg, but the young woman whispers something and tugs her closer.

“This is Haik, _anak,_ ” she says. “He’s our people’s sea-god. Don’t be afraid of him.”

“I need to see the priestess,” Haik tells her. “Which way does she live?”

“ _Ay, naku._ She died last week,” is the semi-truthful--and rather too practiced--answer.

 _The **old** priestess died;_ her ancestors tell him, as he clucks in sympathy.

“If you’re hurt, Haik, the midwife is good with--”

He starts heading into the woods.

“Mama, he can’t go that way. He didn’t say _tabi-po._ ” The girl starts to squirm.

“Well, he’s a god, _anak,_ ” the woman whispers. “He’s much more powerful than the diwat.”

But as they leave the main path, her gait becomes as hesitant as her daughter’s; she shies away from twigs and leaves snapping underfoot, or untrimmed branches tugging at her clothes.

In his god’s vision, the priestess’ soul glimmers ahead.

Haik tries to let the villagers keep pace with him, but he is tired and the crocodile-roars are tearing through his chest--the mother protests something about the house being empty, still smelling of the poor priestess’ body, they didn’t find her for three days--but when he knocks on the door, hard and frantic, it opens before he’s done.

 ** _“Haik.”_** The priestess scans him from head to toe, and his husband peers around him. Their souls are jagged and restless, like horses before a race. “Haik, did they all--”

He shakes his head, but there is no settling down.

“Haik, did you bring one of them? Anyone?” The priestess checks over Haik’s shoulder, but there are only the mother and daughter.

“Ay, Haik.” The villager tugs at his wrist. “Were you bringing someone here? You should have told me.”

 ** _“No.”_** It comes out small and fearful, like the child he hasn’t been for so long now; the tears already sting through the clotted blood on his face.

And the priestess, resigned but no less grieved, latches thick arms around his chest.

* * *

 

Centuries later in Oakland, Carmen whispers something--Haik cannot hear it over their people’s crying, or the crocodiles’ roars--and she stretches up to kiss his mouth.

“What happened to the boy you knew?” She asks him. “Was he okay?”

“Yeah, he was fine,” Haik assures her. “He died a while ago, but… the good kind. Old age, his family loved him, he had a boyfriend. It’s when you get to the cities that things get harder.”

“Because of the Catholics.”

“Not necessarily the CATHOLICS,” Haik says. “In a lot of the provinces, their Catholicism just has more saints or heroes. Catholic fairies who ask the capital-G God for help, that sort of thing.”

“Blonde and blue-eyed Catholic fairies,” Carmen adds wryly.

“That wasn’t from Spain,” he says to her, all too glad for the change in subject. “Back in the day, freaky hair and eyes meant you weren’t human. Like poisonous snakes, ay? Too many colors--look, but don’t touch.”

* * *

 

The tales of pale blond merfolk and fairies are commonly mistaken as a Spanish influence, especially since they’re spoken of as beautiful; but more likely, there were trading ships of Arabs and Indians, or old memories of their Austronesian ancestors.

And to Haik’s surprise, he remembers a-girl-who-becomes-Carmen: Barely bigger than a teenager, with strong, chapped hands and unruly black hair.

“Is that one cursed?” She wonders as the Arabs walk up from the docks, with the single blond man among them. “Why is his hair like straw? He looks like a diwat.”

“Naku--don’t speak like that about guests, _anak!”_ Her mother cuffs her on the shoulder.

“Most Arabs who come here speak Malay, not Tagalog,” her father retorts, chuckling. “They wouldn’t know otherwise unless they were sharp at languages.”

“Haik!” Her mother turns. “You tell her!”

“Well,” he grins. “Try not to gawk at them, _mahal.”_

 ** _“Mahal,”_** her mother groans. “No wonder she acts like this. You’re too nice to her, Haik.”

The Tagalogs would never turn away trade partners (who were frequently guests of the barangay as well, for hospitality was second only to the gods in old times), but the straw-haired people were treated with healthy caution.

Back then, there was an Arab sailor with a blue-eyed _nazar_ amulet, dangling like a war-prize off his wrist. Though he’s as tanned and wrung out from the weather as his companions are, his gawky build and very sincere stubble give away his youth.

Haik knows quite well what’s coming as the boy’s eyes lock in on him: He’s a head above most other Tagalogs, a good hand-width above the Arabs, and easily as thick.

 _“By Allah!”_ His outburst is in Malay, with the unbridled shock of a boy. _“Are you half-giant?”_

 _“Please forgive him, sir,”_ the captain tells Haik, as another sailor yanks the first one back. _“He is young and stupid. This is his first trip here.”_

 _“Oh, don’t worry.”_ Haik waves it off. _“I’m a sailor, too--we forget about land rules for the first few days.”_

 _“You’re our hosts,”_ the captain emphasizes, with a dig of his elbow into the boy’s rib. _“We’d hate to offend you with such remarks.”_

* * *

 

The sailors’ cargo is organized, unloaded, and recorded in Arabic and baybayin alike. As they split into smaller groups among the villagers’ families, the captain tasks himself and the blond sailor to watch the stupid young one, and they stay with she-who-will-be-Carmen.

 _“Anak,”_ her mother says as they cook dinner. “Don’t ask personal questions. They’re guests.”

“How am I supposed to host someone without talking to them?”

“Because _you’re_ not hosting them, _I am.”_ Her mother checks on the pot of rice. “It’s almost done. Make sure it doesn’t burn, _anak._ ”

* * *

 

By the river, just finishing their baths, the crew gives their youngest member similar orders.

“All right, little brother, don’t talk unless you’re spoken to,” the blond advises him, tugging a new shirt on. “Actually, if you can manage it--just don’t talk. We’ll handle it.”

“I can’t talk to my hosts?”

“Not after calling someone a giant, you can’t,” the captain reminds him. “Barely three steps off the ship and you already look like an idiot.”

“Everyone says the islanders are tiny, though,” the boy points out. “I mean, they’re short, but the only _small_ one was the girl he was with. And people say they’re dark-skinned like Africans, but most of the villagers are tan.”

“Oh, little brother.” Now the blond can’t help laughing. “Did people say how there’s so much gold here that their maids and farmers walk around wearing jewelry?”

The boy’s face goes red.

“Don’t worry too much about what you heard,” the bosun assures him. “The minute we’re back home, people mix things up and make up tall tales. Now, there’s a lot of tribes here, and they’re always fighting. Some of them must be dark, especially in all this sun, but Tagalogs? They’re usually in the middle.”

“Except the big guy,” adds the cook. “But he said he was a sailor, so that’s no mystery.”

 

* * *

 

Now in the house, with she-who-will-be-Carmen, the half-dozen sailors praise the smell of duck soup with rice, ladled out into bowls.

“Oh, it’s just soup,” her mother says in Malay, waving it off. “It’s not roasted or anything, like the Chinese do it.”

“After two months on a ship?” The captain takes his bowl from her husband, blowing on his first spoonful. “Damn near anything smells like roast duck.”

“Are you going to Maynila?” She-who-will-be-Carmen wonders. “It’s not too much farther south. We usually start in the morning and get there the next day.”

“That’s if we’re on passenger canoes, little hostess,” the bosun says. “We can’t hug the coast too tightly in a ship--all your reefs are sneaky bastards. More like two or three days for us, especially with a full cargo hold.”

“What’s in Maynila?” Asks the youngest.

“Maynila’s the biggest Tagalog city, in Maynila Bay--you’ll see a lot of Chinese folks and Arabs there, and the mixed islanders look as pale as them.”

“They’re not always mixed,” the ship’s cook says. “When I was his age, my ship went south where the Bisaya live. The chief brought his oldest daughter out to meet us on a litter--they called her a _binukot._ Music, dancers, a big buffalo roasting on a fire. I thought it was just the usual fuss until she stepped out--white like the moon, with black hair to her knees! You’d think she was a fairytale princess.”

“Bisayans cripple their children to get that white,” She-who-will-be-Carmen tells them. “They don’t let them outside in the daytime. Once they get to my age, the only walking they would have done is around their house, so then servants _have_ to carry them around.”

“What?! Why would they do that?!” The blond asks.

“How else would they avoid all the sun here?” her mother muses. “Now, it’s one thing to be pale-skinned, but _Tagalogs_ let our children go outside.”

 

* * *

 

“Oh, dear.” Thoth can’t help a chuckle, and puts the pen down to avoid spilling ink on the page. “Do they talk about each other all the time?”

 _“That ain’t even the half of it,”_ Haik assures him, laughing.

There are many more insults that the tribes say about each other--some as lurid sailors’ tales, and others used to scare a given tribe’s children into behaving properly.

 _“Bisayans get their nads pierced,”_ a Tagalog man tells his friends after a sailing trip south. _“They say it makes them better at sex, but I’m thinking some poor guy’s wife got **really** desperate and went, ‘We tried literally everything else, so if this doesn’t work, I’m divorcing you.’”_

 _“The Tagalogs sacrifice people to their sea-god,”_ a Kalinga mother warns her misbehaving son. _“He turns into a crocodile and he takes them out to the ocean so he can eat them.”_

* * *

 

“Did Tagalogs do human sacrifices?” Carmen wonders in California.

“It must have gotten mixed up with something,” Haik says. “Some tribes, they sacrificed people to _crocodiles_ because that was how crocs became gods or dragons. And crocodiles were powerful water-spirits in nearly all the tribes, so sailors invoked them and Haik for protection. Plus, we got cannibal mermaids, and some people said Haik was a merman.”

He is reluctant to tell her that sometimes their people did sacrifice their own, when they got desperate: A village was raided and suffered exceptional looting or killing. A crop harvest was obliterated by monsoons. The chief or a relative was ill, and would not recover with regular aid.

Haik doesn’t think he will take human sacrifices now, even if he had followers to offer them; it is too painful after the centuries of Westerners using ‘cannibal’ or ‘sacrifice’ or ‘blood magic’ as a shorthand for ‘brown people.’

Scanning his memories, fragmented or locked away or simply too far gone, Haik finds other scenes of him and she-who-will-be-Carmen after the Arab traders arrive, and some a little before; yet he does not remember how they met.

But perhaps that is a good thing, for he does not remember how he lost her.


End file.
